New Aerial, £200
We need a new aerial on the house, the sitting room doesn't get a siginal off a portable aerial, I phoned up 3 local companies and all said between £180 to £220 for a new aerial to be fitted to the house, that sounds like a ripoff to me :eek:, it's only a standard 2 story semi detached house.
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I assume the new aerial is gold plated and comes with solid silver coax?
Given that I was receiving everything except mux B on a probably 1970s indoor aerial with slightly bent poles and surface rust visible in a few places, and I could even get two muxes on a bit of wire with no aerial attached to the top, I went for the cheap one after a bit of arguing. "well I could do you that one guv, but I can't guarantee your Freeview channels, and you really ought to go for this somewhat more pricey model with all the boosters and stuff that are almost certainly overkill even if it is being split off to two rooms"
Anyway, it cost me a couple of quid under £100, rather than over £200 for the one he was trying to upsell me to.
Turns out the cheap one didn't get all the Freeview channels. In fact, it got precisely none of them because the idiot pointed the thing at the wrong transmitter (how is this even possible with all their signal testing equipment?!). Once he had turned it round - and I wasn't planning on letting him leave until it worked - everything came through load and clear, 100% signal quality, and it has been rock solid ever since.
Moral of the story: ignore any upselling, and get somebody who actually knows what they're doing.
In retrospect I should have gone for one of the other quotes, although they were all the same or more than I ended up paying.
I'd much rather go by personal recommendations than ads etc. Also price isn't everything.
http://www.humaxdirect.co.uk/product.asp?ProdRef=88011&cat=access
Even being really generous, the parts are not going to cost more than £50, so £150 labour for a couple of hours work I am afraid to say is a RIP OFF.
Yes EVERYONE (yes even me) has to comply with health and safety regulations and pay our Public Liability insurance etc, but those overheds are small and cannot account for people charging so much. They charge that much because they can, and there are enough people willing (or at least prepared) to pay it.
Going back to the example of the £200 aerial, so charging £150 labour for a couple of hours work. Do you really think £75 per hour is a reasonable rate? No, I didn't think so. Considering I just spent some money on car repairs this week, my local garage charged £40 per hour labour. I thought that was expensive but given the premesis, equipment, tools and machinery they have to buy and maintain, it's not so unreasonable. For a man with a van, a couple of ladders and some tools to charge nearly twice as much is clearly unreasonable.
So either shop arround, or do it yourself. Look in the Yellow pages, not at the big colour glossy adverts (which cost a fortune) but at the small linage adverts, and look for someone close to you that hasn't spent all his profits on advertising.
Following the recent Channel change for Freeview from Rowridge I had to have a new aerial fitted-total cost was £150.
I considered this reasonable as the aerial itself was around £75 and following the installation the installer had to 'optomise' reception over all channels and then do signal strength and quality checka as well.
I now have perfect reception on all Muxes in all weather.
The days of being able to point a cheap aerial in approximately the right direction are,I think,a thing of the past!
suggest PD doesn't get a beamer, they charge £100-£120 per hour.
No chance, can't aford one. Subaru and VW only in this household. Cheap and reliable.
i have an outdoor aerial and an aerial point downstairs but wondering how much an extra one up in the bedroom would cost roughly
I took him a freeview box round and reception was already indicated as strength 8 quality 100% across the band.
Parts as mentioned would be £50-70max, but recabling a few points will obviously be a fair bit of work, however I am in sight of my TX and bought a log periodic from ebay and cabled it up myself in the loft and get a perfect reception.
Do your home as to what you may need, using wolfbane or the dtv website (trade version) predictors.
Domestic stuff.
Was £45 for the first double socket, £25 for multiples.
£200 for an aerial (I knew some fitters) maybe a little steep.
Haggle...go for £150???